Too Much Mary or Too Little Jesus?

Most Protestants who convert to the Catholic Church will testify that the last three things they had to overcome were (1) Mary, (2) Mary, and (3) Mary.  In this paper, I seek to dive into this problem from a perspective that is slightly different than I have seen in the past.  By the end, I will support a bold claim that I hope can further the ecumenical dialog regarding the role of Mary in the Church:

While Protestants will accuse Catholics of making too much out of Mary, the source of the problem lies in a theology that makes far too little of Jesus.

My guide along the way is Fr. Robert Barron, a modern day Fulton Sheen.

Fr. Barron is on a relentless quest to recover the centrality of Jesus in Christianity.  In his text The Priority of Christ, he begins the discussion by illustrating two inoperative extremes taken by modern Christian theology: Jesus as Symbol and The Jesus of History.

“[M]any modern theologians and philosophers separated the figure of Jesus (construed in either a relatively historical or a relatively literal way) from the sacred reality, holiness, religious consciousness, or divinity that he bore” (Barron, 23).

This trend is the result ultimately of Descartes’ philosophical turn towards the subject.  In centering reality on the consciousness in his cogito ergo sum, Descartes simultaneously gives priority to the interior and abstract over the exterior and specific (23).

Of the two opposite problems (Jesus as a mere symbol and Jesus as a mere historical figure), this paper will focus on the first: treating Jesus as only a symbol or archetype.  The second problem, treating Jesus from a purely historical context, causes similar difficulties, but they tend to be more overt.  The researcher employing the historical-critical method, by his very methodology, brackets the divinity of Christ.  The first problem interests me more because it has the same end result, a minimization of the divinity of Jesus, but arrives there in a far more subtle manner.

Fr. Barron does a brilliant job of tracing the religious consequences of the Cartesian turn towards the subject.  First, he considers Immanuel Kant.  Beginning with the categorical imperative - the notion that one must act in a way that actions could become universal law - Kant then posits the existence of God.  Because the moral life involves an experienced tension between duty to what we know is right and natural inclinations that pull us away from that duty, Kant saw it necessary to believe in a God that can reconcile this tension.

“In order to live the moral life realistically, we must therefore postulate the existence of a being powerful enough to reconcile the stringent demand of duty with the pleasant pull of inclination, and this can only be the God who is Lord not only of earth but of heaven as well” (24).

This is important because it shows that, for Kant, the need for God is posterior to the moral life.  In other words, it is philosophy, and not biblical theology, that gives us the universality of belief in God.  Thus, “if biblical theology finds itself at odds with rational religion, the former must cede to the later” (24).

“Religion is then finally and fundamentally about not metaphysics or cosmology [as was held from the patristic period through the late Middle Ages] but morality, the disciplined response to the demand of the categorical imperative” (24).

In this Kantian dynamic, the figure of Jesus is seen first as a moral exemplar, “a person whose wisdom was so pure that it surpassed that of the greatest philosophers, so pristine in fact that it could be described only as having descended from heaven.”  Kant effectively turns Jesus into an “archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to God, a sort of imaginative representation of the categorical imperative” (25).  The problem with Kant’s view of Jesus is that it leaves no room for any importance attached to the historical reality of the Incarnation, specifically to the divinity of Christ.

“The Gospel story of Jesus, says Kant, should be construed as an especially powerful and accurate exemplification of the moral ideal and hence as a particularly effective spur to moral excellence.  Even if we were to assume that a real historical figure stood behind the narrative concerning Jesus, that figure would contribute nothing beyond the power of the idea itself.  Might a real person have inspired the narrative of Jesus?  Perhaps, but one’s theological attention ought to be focussed not on him but rather on the story to which he gave rise, or even more properly to the archetype that the story stirs to life” (26).

Two points ought to be made here before moving on.  First, this approach shows the opposite tendency of the historical critical approach to Sacred Scripture (discussed in the subsequent chapter of Barron’s book).  Instead of reducing Jesus to his mere historical appearance, Kant leaves no room for this appearance.  Second, the fact that Kant recognizes the historical reality of Jesus is not the issue, but rather the fact that his philosophy/theology does not require it.

The summary of the Kantian problem is this: (1) religion is construed as a response to a lived experience (the moral tension between duty and inclination), (2) Jesus is construed as an archetypal response to the situation (a moral exemplar), and (3) even though Kant confesses the divinity of Christ, his philosophy does not necessitate it.

The motivation behind Kant’s disjunction is that same dualism that plagued Descartes’ philosophy: the separation of the inner and the outer, and a priority given to the inner.  Kant, however, was preceded by just four years by Gotthold Lessing.  In 1777 Lessing made a sharp distinction between “the accidental truths of history” and “the necessary truths of reason” (27).  In Lessing’s view, the truths of reason are primary, as they are immune from the same uncertainty that accompanies historical preservation and investigation.  This philosophical problem (that is only a problem in the Cartesian-dualistic trap) became central to Christian philosophy:

“Kant, and most of the theologians who followed him in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, felt the knottiness of this problem in his bones.  Hence negotiating, bridging, leaping, denying, or weeping over Lessing’s gulf become defining moves of much of modern Christology” (27).

Towards the end of Kant’s life, the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher comes on the scene.  His project is to root religious truth in the universal experience of absolute dependency.  “The spiritual person, he argued, is someone who, amidst all of the proximate dependencies of his life, ‘feels’ an all-embracing and all-conditioning dependency of his being upon the power of Being itself.  The source of that feeling is what religious people designate with the word God” (28), and the religious response is a complete surrender to this all-embracing dependency.

For Schleiermacher, Jesus is the archetype of “perfect God-consciousness,” the one who, “throughout his life and despite enormous opposition and strife, maintained a sense of God and, more to the point, allowed himself to be determined by God in every move, decision, and action” (28).  Attempting to improve upon Kant’s lack of need for the Incarnation, Schleiermacher claims that the actual historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who radiated this perfect dependency, allowed those with whom he came in contact to feel the same dependency, and in turn to pass it on throughout the history of the Church.

“Thus Schleiemacher negotiates Lessing’s gulf, not through reason but through intuition.    Because we have the feeling of absolute dependency now - a feeling that is not automatically given to human consciousness - it must have been grounded in a real historical person/event and carried through time and space.  Therefore, for him, Jesus is much more than a literary character of the exemplification of an a priori archetype [as in Kant]; he is, as a concrete historical person, the condition for the possibility of our present Christian religious experience” (28).

While perhaps an improvement on Kant, Schleiermacher’s concept of Jesus still suffers from the modern tendency of focussing on a general experience rather than specific revelation.  Barron (motivated by von Balthasar) points to a problem that runs parallel between Schleiermacher’s theology and Luther’s.  Much like Luther’s sub contrario* compels us to look away from Christ, so “Schleiermacher compels us to look away from him in accord with the emphasis on the primacy of experience: finally it is not Jesus that matters but the feeling that he makes possible in us” (29).

To summarize the Schleiermachian problem: (1) religion is construed as a response to a lived experience (a feeling of dependency), (2) Jesus is construed as an archetypal response to the situation (an exemplar of surrender to this God-dependency), and (3) even though Schleiermacher confesses the divinity of Christ, his philosophy does not necessitate it.

Following Schleiermacher is his disciple: Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich.  Adapting Schleiemacher’s feeling of absolute dependency, Tillich grounds religion in the experience of being “unconditionally concerned”:

“Amidst all of the proximate interests, goals, fears, and hopes that press upon us in a less than ultimate way, there is, Tillich wagers, a concern that preoccupies us in an unceasing and absolute manner...  All religious feeling, thought, and action are rooted, finally, in the sense of being seized by the revealing power of this reality, both radically immanent and radically transcendent” (29).

In other words, there is something “pure”, something unconditioned by the “impurities” of appearance, trying to press itself upon our being.  That something is what we call “God”.

Tillich has a greater interest than his predecessor with what “goes wrong” with religion, and in his calculation, the basic problem is man’s “basic tendency to substitute the less than unconditioned for the unconditioned - in biblical terms to fashion idols” (29).  In Tillich’s schema, Jesus is the “bearer of the unconditioned who, in the most radical and complete sense, points beyond himself to that which bears and thereby allows God in his fullness to appear...  Through the cross, Jesus becomes the mediator of a perfect revelation, because in that awful moment he, as the bearer of the unconditioned, is ‘shaken’ and questioned, and therefore any tendency he might have to block the light of God is precluded.” (30).

Much like Schleiermacher, the historical Jesus retains some meaning for Tillich:

“[O]ur capacity to be seized by the unconditioned  now depends on the real breakthrough of that power in time, mediated by a real historical figure.  But, as with Schleiermacher, this Jesus matters only ‘thinly,’ which is to say, as a symbol of or cipher for a more general existential condition” (30).

To summarize the Tillichian problem: (1) religion is construed as a response to a lived experience (a feeling of being unconditionally concerned), (2) Jesus is construed as an archetypal response to the situation (an exemplar of that unconditioned revelation of being), and (3) even though Tillich confesses the divinity of Christ, his philosophy does not necessitate it.

Up until this point, Barron has discussed only Protestant theology.  The best known Catholic thinker in the tradition of Schleiermacher/Tillich is Karl Rahner.  For Rahner, the human person is always standing before the mystery of being, “oriented towards the horizon of all that can be known” (31).

“This orientation ...  constitutes the transcendentally religious structure of the human spirit; it is the human being’s capacity to be a ‘hearer of the Word.’  Like the feeling of absolute dependency [Schleiermacher], the categorical imperative [Kant], and ultimate concern [Tillich], this standing in the presence of absolute mystery is the subjective existential ground for religion” (31).

In his philosophy, Rahner presents Jesus as the archetype of openness to God and of responding consistently and completely to God’s grace.  As in the every aforementioned case, Christ is presented as the exemplar of a religious sensibility (31).

To summarize the Rahnerian problem: (1) religion is construed as a response to a lived experience (a feeling of standing amidst the mystery of being), (2) Jesus is construed as an archetypal response to the situation (an exemplar of openness to this mystery), and (3) even though Schleiermacher confesses the divinity of Christ, his philosophy does not necessitate it.

What all four thinkers have in common is (1) they see religion as rooted in some fundamental experience (rather than metaphysical reality), (2) they describe a Jesus that does not stand on his own, but rather is placed and interpreted as an archetype in the context of this experience, and (3) even thought they confess the divinity of Jesus, their construction of him within this context does not necessitate divinity.

“In the modern thinkers we have been analyzing, interpretive primacy is consistently given to the generic over the specific, so that Jesus is ‘positioned’ by something beyond him.  In Kant, for instance, it is not Jesus in his uniqueness who determines the content of the categorical imperative; rather, it is the imperative that renders Jesus intelligible as a religious symbol.  And in Rahner, it is not the concrete Christ that specifies the nature of absolute mystery but rather the experience of the absolute mystery that renders Christ credible” (31).

In all cases, Jesus is rendered a mere symbol and the Incarnation is divested of its essential reality; it is also divested of its inherent scandal and novelty as found in every page of the New Testament.  Even for Schleiermacher and Tillich, who at least attempt to give the Incarnation some necessity, Jesus is seen very much “like a ladder that, having gotten us to the level we desire, could simply be kicked away” (31).

In contrast to this, the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar “claimed that Christian theology becomes compelling precisely at the point where Rahner’s theological anthropology ends: it is not the human being in the presence of an absolute mystery that finally matters but rather the Jesus who shows in an utterly surprising way the true nature of that mystery” (32).  This also explains why Balthasar continually references the concrete form that is Jesus.

The fundamental problem shared by all of the liberal thinkers is a compromise of Jesus’ claim to divinity.  True, all four (Kant, Schleiermacher, Tillich, and Rahner) will confess the divinity, but their theological schema does not depend on it nor necessitate it.  Just as Nestorius admitted that Jesus was divine yet meant only that Jesus was “transparent to God through the perfection of his moral and spiritual life,” it must be asked whether the liberal thinkers are guilty of falling into a sort of “neo-Nestorianism” (33).

While avoiding over-generalization, it seems to me that much of Protestant theology bears the same flaw.  (Let it be know, too, that most modern Catholic theology falls prey to this error as well.)  If it is not in the line of historical-critical research, which by its very methodology brackets the divinity of Christ at the service of discovering the “historical” Jesus, then it slips into a Schleiermachian-Tillichian schema, which compromises the divinity of Christ as a sort of “flip side of the coin” to the historical-critical approach.  Once more, it must be emphasized that theology in this tradition can and does often confess the divinity of Jesus, but the Christ-concept held by the theology does not strictly speaking required it.

And now we come to the crux of the issue.

“One of Balthasar’s most trenchant critiques of Rahner’s Christology is that Rahner cannot finally distinguish between the radical openness to God found in Jesus and that found in Mary, the one who, in the depth of her being, said yes to the invitation of the Holy Spirit” (34).

We could issue the same critique of the other three thinkers.  Each develops an archetype that cannot finally decide between Jesus and Mary, because each, in their own way, sees Jesus as the “perfect man” and leaves no interpretive room for his divinity.  For instance, the moral exemplar that is Jesus in the Kantian construction cannot finally be separated from the Immaculate Conception of Mary.  It is important to keep in mind why these modern thinkers view Christ through the lens of an archetype.  It begins with their philosophy of religion, and each sees religion as a response to a particular lived experience.  The experience gives rise to the need for an archetype of that experience, i.e. Jesus.  This confusion of Jesus and Mary does not find its source in an over-exalted view of Mary, but rather in an under-exalted view of Jesus.  The modern thinkers cannot finally decide that Jesus is “not simply greater than Mary, but is somehow else” (34).

As I stated before, this primacy of experience over metaphysics, while motivated by modern philosophy, finds a home in the Protestant project.  (While Rahner is Catholic, he departs in a modern fashion from traditional Catholic theology.)  The vocabulary emphasis of a “personal relationship with Jesus” shows this tendency towards an a priori lived experience.  When that happens, Christ will be viewed as an archetype of that experience, and his divinity will, strictly speaking, not be necessary.  In other words, while a Protestant will confess the divinity of Christ in speaking of the personal relationship, the theology that begins with the lived experience of a relationship does not necessitate divinity, but merely a perfect companion.

It is important to pause at this point and note that each of the four thinkers speaks of an aspect of Christ that is indeed true.  Christ is a moral exemplar (Kant).  Christ is a model of surrender (Schleiermach).  Christ is an archetype of unconditionally pointing towards the Father (Tillich).  Christ is a model of perfect openness (Rahner).  Finally, in the typical Protestant fashion, it is important to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  However, the starting point of a proper Christology, one that is built on the real hypostatic union, requires us to start from Jesus, fully divine and fully human, not from any of these lived experiences. 

Traditional Catholic theology and Protestant theology do, however, have something in common: both recognize that Jesus is not Mary.  The source of the controversy is that the Catholic presentation of Mary as the archetype of humanity (given in the Marian dogmas) cannot be adequately distinguished from the typically Protestant presentation of Jesus.  This is indeed a problem.  The Protestant solution to this has been to protest that the Catholic Church makes too much of Mary.  The authentically Catholic solution is the opposite: to recognize that existential Protestant theology makes far too little of Jesus.  Perhaps if we can reconstruct an adequate and full theology of Jesus Christ, seeing Mary as a archetypal human will not seem so scandalous.  In the end, is this not the Catholic goal of the Marian dogmas: to point us to a higher truth about Jesus Christ?

*  Luther’s principle of sub contrario, overly simplified, states that God is so incomprehensible that Christ always appears in a manner opposite Himself.  To quote Ratzinger, “It seems to me that the basic feature is the fear of God by which Luther's very existence was struck down, torn between God's calling and the realization of his own sinfulness, so much so that God appears to him sub contrario, as the opposite of Himself, i.e. as the Devil who wants to destroy man. To break free of this fear of God becomes the real issue of redemption. Redemption is realized the moment faith appears as the rescue from the demands of self-justification, that is, as a personal certainty of salvation. This "axis: of the concept of faith is explained very clearly in Luther's Little Catechism: ‘I believe that God created me .... I believe that Jesus Christ ... is my Lord who saved me ... in order that I may be His ... and serve Him forever in justice and innocence forever.’ Faith assures, above all, the certainty of one's own salvation. The personal certainty of redemption becomes the center of Luther's ideas. Without it, there would be no salvation” (Communio 11, Fall 1984).